Long Before
by Micky Fine
Summary: Sitting in his office chair absent-mindedly contemplating the wall, Booth was well-aware of the blood that had dried on his white dress shirt. He wasn’t ready to take it off yet. He needed to remember. Oneshot. Spoilers 5.1. BB


_I felt that Booth's shirt and abstraction when he talked to Caroline need some explanation. Here's what I came up with._

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He hadn't even been back to work an entire week and he had already been forced to face a nightmare. Sitting in his office chair absent-mindedly contemplating the wall, Booth was well-aware of the blood that had dried on his white dress shirt. He wasn't ready to take it off yet. He needed to remember.

His memory had been off ever since the surgery. Things that had been so integral to his identity had slipped away and he felt as if he were grasping in the dark trying to find objects that should be familiar and yet suddenly were utterly strange. On the other hand, things that he had come out of the coma being absolutely sure of were starting to drift. And then there were things that he had been sure were one thing but after turning them over several times, they had turned out to be something else.

His relationship with Bones fell squarely in this final category. It had taken days for him to separate the dream from the reality. Weeks to really accept that the woman who was such a central part of his life was not his wife but only a co-worker and friend. Her sudden absence had not helped. If she had been there to stare at him as if he'd grown another head when he referred to her as his spouse it would have cleared his head so much quicker. But she had remained true to form and run from what she couldn't deal with. This characteristic he remembered so well. Whether she was his wife or not, he still knew and understood her better than she did herself.

Now, though he knew what was fact and what was fiction, the emotions still remained. The feelings that caused his life to orbit around hers and always made him consider her first. Although Sweets had insisted they were merely vestiges of the coma, he wasn't so sure. He seemed to remember feeling something like this for Bones before the surgery, but perhaps it was only imagined. And yet his gut was telling him different. He was more certain that these feelings were true than of anything that he had had to reconstruct about himself. Tonight had only served to reassure him.

From the moment the psychic had sent him running off to find Bones, he'd felt a strong sense of emotional déjà vu. The adrenaline pumping through his veins, the bitter taste in his mouth, and the vital need to be with her and protect her from any harm was so damn familiar. He'd done this before. Too many times before.

Swooping in and saving the day was not a new experience for Seeley Booth. He remembered doing it countless times before. Times that had nothing to do with his partner. But the look on Bones' face when she'd looked up and met his gaze was one he knew he'd seen before. It twisted his gut in a way nothing else could. Of course, the feeling like his heart and lungs had disappeared from his chest when he saw the scalpel protruding from her arm was also a painfully familiar sensation. And as he held her in his arms, reassuring her, and trying to keep the blood from seeping between his fingers, he knew he would never feel this way about anyone else.

He'd gone with her to the emergency room. Watched them give her pain meds and stitch her up. He'd driven her home, hoping she would stay there, but knowing she was stubborn and would leave to return to her work as soon as he was gone. All along, his belief that he loved her never wavered. It felt so right. He swore he could remember feeling this way before the coma.

But Cam and Sweets' warnings repeated themselves over and over again in an audio loop in his brain. Reminders that he HAD to be sure. That he needed to be absolutely positive that these feelings were as real as the striped socks he always wore on his feet. Because Bones would not survive the fallout were they to turn out to be false. And he knew it just as well as they did because even though he couldn't remember some things about himself, he remembered everything about her. He knew that she liked daffodils. He knew the precise angle her elbows made when her hands landed on her hips when she was upset. He knew exactly how it felt to have her crush herself to him in a hug when she needed comfort. Most of all, he knew that getting her to open up had been the hardest thing he'd ever done and he was well aware that even the smallest wrong move on his part would shut her down completely.

So he was stuck in the same balancing act he had been in before the surgery. Desperately trying to pull her close enough to him so that he could share how he truly felt but always well aware that the smallest wrong move could send her running in the opposite direction. Despite this knowledge, he still felt the need to tell her. She needed to know. She had to know. He loved her. He loved her now and he would love her for as long as he lived. He knew it. His gut was never wrong.

And so he sat, staring at the wall in his office, the scent of dried blood strong in his nostrils. It caused his gut to twist with the remembered fear of how close he'd come to losing her. It was a feeling he knew well, one he'd been fighting for years. He welcomed it this once because it let him know that he truly cared for her. His love had to be real because it had been there before. It had been there long before.

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_I'd appreciate any thoughts or feedback you care to share. Thanks for reading!_


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